Kingdom Crumbs: Wednesday, Feb. 6

The future of hip-hop is living in Seattle. And no, it’s not Macklemore.

KINGDOM CRUMBS - IMAGE: Lucien Pellegrin

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[TOMORROW’S HIP-HOP] Like an increasing number of rappers
these days, Tay Sean Brown of Seattle’s Kingdom Crumbs doesn’t listen to
much hip-hop. Not as much as he used to, anyway. Growing up, he was
what might be deemed “a true head.” He rhymed, break-danced, dabbled in
graffiti, made beats. Asked what inspires him today, though, Brown is
more inclined to mention L.A.’s Brainfeeder label—a crew of producers
who smash hip-hop into pieces and filter the shards through the lens of
electronic music—than any MC.

Simply put, Brown is a
rapper burned out on rap. It’s not that he’s forsaken the culture that
raised him. He just recognizes that, in order for the music to move
forward, it must look beyond itself and admit that the so-called “golden
era” of hip-hop, which many of his peers still cling to, is over.

“I’ve heard enough
boom-bap stuff in my time,” Brown says by phone from a hotel somewhere
in Illinois, referring to the production style of early ’90s rap. “I
still like listening to it from time to time, but I’m just a little more
moved by things that are progressive and experimental and heartfelt.
Not to say that boom-bap hip-hop isn’t heartfelt. I guess I just got a
little bit tired of it.”

Kingdom
Crumbs is Brown’s effort to nudge hip-hop toward its future. Formed in
2010, the group—Brown, Jerm D, Mikey Nice and Jarv Dee—is, to use the
parlance of the genre, on some next-level shit. Its self-titled debut,
released last year, takes the shadowy template of Shabazz Palaces—the
act at the forefront of Seattle’s rap avant-garde and whom Brown is
currently assisting on tour—and turns up the black lights. Produced
mainly by Brown, the album’s airy, psychedelic beats often seem to float
above ground, but the record stays tethered to earth by the MCs’
laid-back, streetwise swagger. It’s aggressively unique, but Brown says
it’s wrong to read the album as a direct response to the stagnant state
of hip-hop.

“Maybe subconsciously
it’s like, ‘We’re filling in the gaps here,’ but it’s not a conscious
effort to do that,” he says. “We’re just trying to make the music we
like.”

Live, however, is
where the Crumbs deliberately try to stand out. In contrast to the
typical “one laptop and a few microphones” setup, the group reproduces
its beats together onstage by banging on drum machines and synthesizers,
often while performing synchronized dance moves, infusing the
abstractions of its album with house-party energy. In a sense, it’s the
forward-thinking crew’s way of reaching back to an older hip-hop ideal:
As Rakim once said, “MC means ‘move the crowd.’”

“We
went into the record knowing we wanted to do more than just grab the mic
and rap,” Brown says. “We’d all done that enough times that we’d kind
of gotten bored with it. When an artist appreciates the opportunity
they’re given to get in front of a crowd and give them something,
whether that crowd is 20, 30 people or whether it’s 2,000 people—I take
that seriously. I want to give those people a good show. I wasn’t
satisfied with just rapping over my beats. I don’t feel that’s doing
enough.”